Amnesty International decries U.S. rights violations

Amnesty International lambasts US for human rights violations
Press TV
Thu May 24, 2012

Amnesty International has lambasted the United States for a number of human rights violations across the world.

In its 2012 annual report published on Wednesday, the rights group called US drone attacks in Yemen “extrajudicial executions,” Amnesty International’s website said.

Amnesty also censured US President Barack Obama’s failure to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and criticized conditions in US prisons.

The report said that at the end of 2011, almost two years after Obama’s deadline to close the detention center, “171 men were still held at the base, including four who had been convicted by military commission.”

In addition, Amnesty criticized Washington for its “use of lethal force” for the “unlawful” killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011.

“The US administration made clear that the operation had been conducted under the USA’s theory of a global armed conflict between the USA and al-Qaeda in which the USA does not recognize the applicability of international human rights law. In the absence of further clarification from the US authorities, the killing of Osama Bin Laden would appear to have been unlawful,” it said.

The rights group also condemned human rights violations committed under the administration of former US President George W. Bush, including CIA’s “secret detention and rendition”, which is a process of transferring “individuals from the custody of one state to another by means that bypass judicial and administrative due process”, and condemned the impunity with which Bush-era officials operated.

MHB/GJH/AS/HN

Image credit: Press TV

Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails (Democracy Now)

Democracynow.org
April 20, 2012


Published on Apr 20, 2012 by democracynow
http://youtu.be/hfS2Op9l3nk

DemocracyNow.org - National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander's assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens.

This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 1, 2, and 4. [includes rush transcript]


GUESTS:
William Binney, served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state."

Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher who has volunteered with WikiLeaks. He is a developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a network enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the internet.

Laura Poitras, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer. She is working on the third part of a trilogy of films about America post-9/11. The first film was My Country, My Country," and the second was The Oath.

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The FBI taught its agents that they could sometimes “bend or suspend the law”

FBI Taught Agents They Could ‘Bend or Suspend the Law’

By Spencer Ackerman
WIRED
March 28, 2012

The FBI taught its agents that they could sometimes “bend or suspend the law” in their hunt for terrorists and criminals. Other FBI instructional material, discovered during a months-long review of FBI counterterrorism training, warned agents against shaking hands with “Asians” and said Arabs were prone to “Jekyll & Hyde temper tantrums.”

These are just some of the disturbing results of the FBI’s six-month review into how the Bureau trained its counterterrorism agents. That review, now complete, did not result in a single disciplinary action for any instructor. Nor did it mandate the retraining of any FBI agent exposed to what the Bureau concedes was inappropriate material. Nor did it look at any intelligence reports that might have been influenced by the training. All that has a powerful senator saying that the review represents a “failure to adequately address” the problem.

“This is not an effective way to protect the United States,” Sen. Richard Durbin, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing the FBI, tells Danger Room about the inappropriate FBI counterterrorism training. “It’s stunning that these things could be said to members of our FBI in training. It will not make them more effective in their work and won’t make America safer.”

At the least, Durbin adds, “those responsible for some of the worst parts of this should be reassigned. I want FBI agents who were exposed to some of these comments to at least have a chance to be spoken to and given valid, positive information that can help them.”

One FBI PowerPoint — disclosed in a letter Durbin sent to FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday (.PDF) and shared with Danger Room — stated: “Under certain circumstances, the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” An incredulous Durbin told Danger Room, “Time and time again when that is done, it has not made us safer.” Like other excerpts from FBI documents Danger Room reviewed for this story, it was not dated and did not include additional context explaining what those “circumstances” might be...

(click here to read the full article)